Search Results for 'Forthill Cemetery'

The colourful look back on the year of sport in Galway by Ralph O'Gorman has become an iconic part of the New Year's reflection on the event on and off the field and tracks over the past twelve months. Enjoy.

This photograph of St Patrick’s Church and part of Forster Street was taken from the Galway/Clifden Railway Line overlooking James Mahon’s Field where the circuses used to be long ago. It was taken c1920.

The site of the Augustinian House when the order first came to Galway in 1508 was on the hill we know as Forthill today. Margaret Athy, the wife of the Mayor Stephen Lynch, invited them and she built a church and steeple there too. Her husband was away in Spain and got a shock when he returned to see the finished new building on the hill. The friars moved into a house within the walled city but their church was still between the city and the bay.

The backers of the game-changing Augustine Hill urban regeneration project to be built on lands at the rear of Ceannt Station have welcomed the news delivered this week that Galway City Council planners have approved the project, albeit with 53 conditions, most of which are standard.

The scale of the massive game-changing development Augustine Hill, to be located on lands adjacent to Ceannt Station, has been reduced significantly in a number of ways, in designs submitted in response to requests for further information from planners at Galway City Council.

At early Mass on Christmas morning 1842, there was a dreadful accident at Galway’s Pro-Cathedral during which 37 people were killed, and many more were injured. Known as the Parish Church, and completed just twenty-one years before, it was by far the largest Catholic church in the town, surprisingly built in preCatholic Emancipation times.

Edward Eyre arrived in Galway with the Cromwellian army, became a major political figure, and secured extensive grants from the Corporation and a considerable amount of property in both the city and county, mostly from displaced Catholic families, in the period 1660 to 1670. Most of this property was outside the town walls and included areas that we now know as the railway station, Forthill Cemetery, Victoria Place, Merchants Road, the Commercial Dock, Woodquay, Suckeen, and Eyre Square.

For many decades, Galway city has been recognised as a place that is welcoming of its visiting tourists and to all those who come to secure work or to study. Over the past three decades, the NUIG student population has doubled from 9,000 in the early 1980s to more than 18,000 today.

It is often said that one cannot claim to be a true ‘old Galwegian’ or ‘auld shtock’ unless one has some relations buried in Forthill Cemetery at Lough Atalia. It is probably the oldest cemetery in Galway. The Augustinians have been associated with it since the year 1500. The Augustinian convent or priory was built there by Margaret Athy at the request of a friar, Richard Nagle, and it probably stood on level ground at the upper level of Forthill. The grounds of the priory extended quite a bit along the shores of Lough Atalia, at least to the site where St Augustine’s Well is today. Nothing at all remains of the priory except some drawings on the 1625 and 1651 maps.